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Government shutdown won't bring a border wall

Sun-News Editorial Board
Published 5:14 p.m. MT Dec. 27, 2018

A sign at the entrance to the Redding Field Office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management notified visitors Thursday that the office was closed due to a government shutdown.(Photo: Damon Arthur/Record Searchlight)

Government shutdowns have become so routine that people may have stopped paying much attention to them.

The shutdown that began Friday is the third during the two years of the Trump administration. And, because Congress was able to pass funding for about three-quarters of the federal government, not all agencies are impacted by this shutdown. Most of us haven’t noticed any impacts to our lives yet.

It seems that even Congress isn’t all that concerned. President Donald Trump felt compelled to stay in Washington over Christmas, but members of the House and Senate did not. Senators returned from their holiday break on Thursday, but no votes were scheduled on the issue. The House wasn’t expected to meet Thursday.

If the intent of a government shutdown is to put so much pressure on the other side that they give in to your demands, that clearly is not working this time – if it ever did work. The only apparent pressure in the current standoff is coming from the partisans on both sides demanding that they never give in.

It’s easy to forget that real people who have nothing to do with the fight in Washington are being harmed. It’s estimated that some 420,000 federal workers who are deemed to be “essential” are now working without pay, including some 54,000 employees from Customs and Border Protection. Another 380,000 nonessential workers have been furloughed.

It is expected that they will receive their pay once the shutdown has ended, but nobody knows how long that will take. And the bills won’t wait.

There are also countless workers who are employed by companies with federal contracts. Unlike the federal employees, most of them will not be compensated for lost wages once this shutdown ends.

And, there are services to the public that cannot be performed during the shutdown. National Parks will be closed, the processing for new home loans will be delayed, the SEC will not accept filings and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will curtail operations, among other impacts.

Unlike past government shutdowns, this time nobody is making the argument that the pain inflicted by the shutdown will be worth it in the end.

President Trump is hoping to get a few more dollars for a border wall that he promised us Mexico would pay for. He’s not holding out for the $25 billion that Democrats agreed to last summer as part of a larger immigration reform package. That’s off the table. The president is now demanding $5 billion, while the Democrats are offering $1.3 billion.

Of course, this isn’t about money. It’s about the president’s demand for a border wall. Democrats were willing to give in on the issue last summer when they had no leverage. Things changed with the November election. Democrats take control of the House next week, and will vote immediately to end the shutdown when they do.

The president can probably keep the Republican-controlled Senate from voting on the bill, and he could veto it if they do. He still controls how long the shutdown will last, but Democrats control how it will end. And that is without money for an unneeded border wall.